There is no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced many industries, including the music industry. This song analysis was conducted as an effort to learn about how the pandemic affected the Korean music industry. In particular, it aims to analyze possible changes in genres before and after the pandemic, possible increases or decreases in the production of music, and possible changes in the content of the lyrics.
Introduction
Methodology
- Downloaded lyrics from https://kpoplyrics.net
- Total of 13,545 songs. 4,841 songs with English translation
- Parsed text to extract words; stopwords were removed
- Definitions: Pre-COVID Period (Jan 2019 - Apr 2020), The height of COVID (Apr 2020 - Jan 2021), Post-COVID period (Jan 2021 - Dec 2021).
Songs per Year
- The core insight that this visualization communicates is that the number of songs being released seem to have increased during and after the height of COVID, compared to before COVID. Although it is difficult to pinpoint a leading cause for this trend, a possible speculation is that quarantine and isolation prevented people from doing many outside activities, inspiring them to participate more in unaffected activities such as writing and releasing songs. The line graph helps to show an upward trend in the release of songs.
Songs per Year by Genre
- The core insight that this visualization communicates is that the popularity of some genres have changed while others stayed rather stagnant. In particular, it seems like dance songs have increased a significant amount in times after the height of COVID. This may perhaps be to the lessening of social distancing requirements or the desire to feel free. OST/Ballad songs, on the other hand, decreased during and post-COVID. A possible cause for this is that COVID prevented the movie/drama industry from being as active as it was before, due to distancing requirements. The bar graphs separated by genres helps to paint the trend of genres throughout the years.
Songs per Year by Genre (Cont.)
- The line graphs separated by genres provides an alternative view of the change in genres over the years. Again, it appears that the dance genre became more popular, while the R&B/Soul genre stayed rather rather stagnant. Rap/Hip-Hop seemed to have increased before COVID but started to decrease again during. OST/Ballad appears to have decreased during and after COVID.
Word Cloud
- The following word clouds display the most commonly occurring words in songs, divided by time periods. This visualization helps to understand the difference in song topics throughout different periods, especially as the words are scaled according to their frequency of appearance.
Word Cloud - Pre-Covid
Word Cloud - Covid
Word Cloud - Post-Covid
